Jera's quilt is growing

I have added what I call fabric bricks to Jera's quilt. There are several conversation prints in there--cats, dogs, butterflies, and so forth. The quilt top now measures about 48 by 58 inches. I have to decide how big I want the quilt to be. And what kind of border (borders) to add. I might opt for some more of that bright yellow, because I have a lot of that fabric left. I think that I'll wait until tomorrow to make up my mind. Sometimes I get good ideas in the wee hours. I have included a photo of the interesting magnolia tree that grows in the courtyard outside of my door. This tree had lovely pink flowers that the hummingbirds just loved. Now the flowers have ripened into seed pods and the leaves have all fallen off. The tree goes through several stages during the year.

More sewing going on and on

I've been getting some serious sewing done on this quilt.  I decided to try making some triangles.  I have so many books with pictures of antique quilts, and these kind of triangles appear over and over.  Let me tell you, they are tricky to sew.  I made them by cutting squares on the diagonal.  The bias edges are stretchy.  And probably in most of those antique quilts, the sewer joined the triangles sewing by hand.  Anyhow, my quilt will never make it into the county fair, so if my triangles are a bit off--well so what.  I proclaim them to be officially liberated.  I surrounded the center with this "water" fabric. I'm thinking of making the rest of the quilt mostly of bricks in conversation prints.

Bloggers Quilt Festival 5-2010

It's time for the Bloggers Quilt Festival.  Here's the link http://www.amyscreativeside.com/  I made this quilt for my daughter who lives far away from me in Florida.  I was inspired to make this pattern which is a Liberated Shoo Fly by reading the book Liberated Quiltmaking by Gwen Marston.  That book is now out of print, but Gwen Marston has recently published another book called Liberated Quiltmaking II and it has similar directions.  I used an assortment of solid colors for the background of the blocks, and then I added scraps galore.  I try to use my scraps whenever I can, as you can see.  I included scraps in the borders.  But my scraps seem to multiply nevertheless.  This quilt was so much fun to sew.  I like to just throw colors together--I'm not the interior decorator type, I guess.  I free-motion quilted on my sewing machine.

Onward and upward

My sewing proceeds at a snail's pace.  It's been a busy week for me!  And besides everything else, I had my routine doctor's visit.  She gave me a list of everything I'm allergic to.  Pollen and dust, mostly.  I really must dust my place a lot oftener, I think.  Anyway, I did manage to get most of the lettering together for my quilt.  It requires a lot of sewing and ripping out for me to make just one word!  And I wanted to post one of my Mother's Day gifts.  My daughter brought me this little sewing bag from Florida.  I just put some thread in it for the photo.  This is quite funny, really, she bought this sewing bag unaware of its use.  She just wanted to hide a lovely pair of earrings for me in it! And in order to further disguise these earrings--she put the little sewing bag in a cute basket and put a great big 16 ounce ball of yarn on top!  How she got that into her carry-on luggage, I don't know!  But either the basket or the ball of yarn alone would have made a great gift.  There you go!  The basket turned out to be the perfect size to hold the red-work quilt that I have started to embroider last week.  And I found a great project on the Internet for a shawl thing to make with that ball of yarn.

Completed free-pieced log cabin quilt

Goody, goody, I finally finished binding this quilt.  Just in time to give it to my sister who was visiting for the anniversary.  By the way, the Fiftieth Anniversary was really a beautiful experience!  We had not been all together--me, my husband and all three of our children for a few years.  And my sister and her husband, one of our grandsons and a cousin were able to attend.   It was wonderful, and one of the best days of my entire life.   I've added a couple of photos of places our guests visited.  One is of an ancient myrtle tree that grows in the middle of Monrovia, California.  The other photos are at Laguna Beach.  I visited the library bookstore there and I wouldn't let the man in the store sit down until I had taken a photo of the chair in there.  One of the volunteers had crocheted a chair cover.  Wish I knew her name--what a piece of art!  Back to the quilting, I'm hoping to dive in to making that quilt I started. I think I might make it into a medallion type. Maybe.

Spring is sprung

It's Spring!  Nice weather today.  I'm machine quilting that scrap quilt.  And I've been busy with some family stuff.  It's going to be our anniversary.  Fifty years is a long time.  Oh Happy Day.  We're celebrating it a bit early, because that's when we can all get together. The actual anniversary isn't until July--but after fifty years a few days here or there is no big deal.  My husband and I eloped back then, and my father was happy, because he was worried about paying for a wedding.  It was very amusing, we got married at City Hall, and the clerk wore big glasses, but it didn't seem to be helping his eyesight, as he had trouble seeing who was the bride and who was the groom--Hello--the bride is the one with the white veil.  We had a religious ceremony at a later date.